I found my dongle (from yesterday’s post.) After causing more disorganization and trauma to my visually organized (cluttered) space, I checked the kitchen drawer for the third time and found it, laying sideways, so it was hard to see. But still. Man I gotta purge this place of all extraneous stuff. Being an artist though makes it hard to know what is extraneous!
A few things emerged as important from yesterday. The first was that I enjoy digital painting, a lot! I teach kids how to do it all the time but don’t take the time to do it myself. As much as I love the process, I unconsciously haven’t given it the product artistic merit or value that I give other media. The control of the pen is awkward, sitting hunched up hurts my neck, and I stumbled with Photoshop, not being a Mac person. After making a 20 minute doodle and printing it HUGE on fabric, I am transformed -- I love it all over again and can see its potential. Woot! The second thing that is sure to be huge in what my future art looks like is access to The Beast. It is a 60” color pigment based inkjet printer. It can print on canvas, lycra, linen, cotton, plastics, and of course, paper. The color is AMAZING and the quality incredible. At $1 per linear inch, it is a bargain. Only enrolled students have access to the print lab, and the tech told me that sometimes people register for a cheap workshop and don’t attend just so they can get their printing done, Whatever works! It is cool there because while there are techs to help, you are at the computer literally sending the stuff through yourself. I made a botch job of it yesterday and the nice tech credited me back some errors, but with practice I think I can get better at the process. Watching what other people were printing was inspiring, too.
As I head in today, I hope to not run around the campus from lab to lab and wear myself out physically, but to sit and collage my a** off. I am bringing canvases, printouts of my pottery motifs, and some more book paper to get started with, a bag of wierd stuff I like to stamp and print with, and off we go. Heaven. Though the temp in the room feels hellish!
So much to do over the next three weeks. Spoonflower printing has 42” wide fabric. I plan on trying them for comparison sake while I am in this class. Not sure how large I want to be working, but I know the larger images are very powerful. Wowwwwza. I also struggle a bit with appropriation -- I like to begin with a photo, often of an artifact, but if the photo isn’t mine, how much of the art is? If I transform the heck out of it, isn’t it still someone else’s image? Or have I just observed it in a fresh way? Good question for kids. I am thinking of my slide collection, here...there is a whole body of work waiting to be made. !!
Watched another great JamesKalm video on YouTube about an artist from the 80’s that really resonates with me. It is fascinating to me to understand how some of his work is “art” and that I even like it. A review of an exhibit of Basquiat’s Unknown Notebooks from the Brooklyn Museum is here.